


It Ain't Me

by imaginarycircus



Category: Check Please! (Webcomic)
Genre: Gen, Jack Zimmerman is totally in love with Eric Bittle but will probably never admit it, Shitty has more immediate problems, bros helping bros not be dicks, whatever
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-04-25
Updated: 2016-04-25
Packaged: 2018-06-04 12:08:38
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,322
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6657175
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/imaginarycircus/pseuds/imaginarycircus
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Nursey wrecks the Haus's screen door after he had another fight with Dex. Shitty lays down some hard truths on a Home Depot run for a new door.</p>
            </blockquote>





	It Ain't Me

**Author's Note:**

  * For [aeternamente](https://archiveofourown.org/users/aeternamente/gifts).



> Written for a prompt at tumblr. Title taken from Credence Clearwater Revival song "I Ain't No Fortunate Son." (Something I never ever thought I'd be quoting. Who even am I?)
> 
> Take place during early October of Shitty and Jack's senior year.

“I don’t need your charity, asshole.” Dex slammed the screen door so hard that some small metal part pinged onto the floor. 

Shitty, who was coming into The Haus, squeezed the rusted handle and the whole thing came right out of the frame and landed on him. Thankfully it was only a screen door, but man if it ruined his flow he was going to be pissed. He could feel a few hairs caught in something. He reached up to carefully free them, but--

"Shit. Sorry, man." Nursey leaped forward to help before Shitty could stop him and he tripped. All 190 lbs of him. Onto the door. The mesh screen ripped and Shitty ended up with it around his middle like a badly conceived strait jacket. He shook his head. His flow lived.

“Oh, God.” Nursey scrambled forward and the door buckled in the middle.

“Just get off the fucking door.” Shitty made shooing motions and Nursey scrambled back so that Shitty could push the door down and step out of it like it was a skirt he was taking off. He inspected himself for damage. There was a small scratch on his arm, and small tear in his shirt where the wire screen had snagged. It was the stiff, old wire kind of screen and not the soft fabric kind.

Nursey was sputtering. Derek Nurse fronted super well, but Shitty knew a prep school kid front when he saw one. Like he'd never call him on it. Not exactly a glass house. Maybe plexiglass? 

"Dude. Are you all right?" Nursey grabbed Shitty's face and turned it from side to side like he was his mother.

Shitty shook him off and nudged the mangled door with his toe. “I’m going to call it. Time of death 3:23 PM.”

“It’s 4:15.” A annoyed southern accent proclaimed from the front hall.

Nursey and Shitty turned. It was probably the rolling pin that made Bitty looked so formidable. (Ransom had calculated the odds of seeing Bitty with a rolling pin at any time were 1 in 3.)

“Hey, Bits,” Shitty hid his his scratched arm behind him so that Bitty wouldn't grease him up with neosporin. “Nursey and I are off to the Home Despot for a new door. No worries.”

Bitty shut the wooden front door, muttering about drafts. Shitty loved that you were never in doubt about how Eric Bittle felt about anything. Like how could Jack look at Bitty and not see the heart eyes? Everything Bitty felt was right there in all caps. And when he tried to hide his feelings it was like a blinking neon arrow. Well. Shitty couldn't do anything about dumb Canadians. Dumb frogs, on the other hand...

“Meet me across the street. Bring your wallet and that.” Shitty pointed at the door and Nursey looked worried, but nodded.

Because the broken door folded like a taco shell, it was easy to cram into the back seat of Shitty’s Volvo. Several stoned Lacrosse players were draped across their front yard. They watched with dopey grins. Nursey was quieter than usual and it wasn’t the chill dude kind of quiet. It was the, "Dad always said not to play ball in the house," kind of quiet.

The engine rumbled away like a very large, asthmatic cat. Shitty scrolled through his music until he found the most awkward song possible. Time for some tough love. Nursey recognized the twangy guitar intro and glanced at Shitty in surprise and then went back to running his fingers along the rubber seal at the bottom of the window. Shitty was going to let him stew. He turned the volume up, and caterwauled along to “I Ain't No Fortunate Son.” He saw Nursey wince and sang louder and poked him to join in at the stoplight. Over a guitar riff he yelled, "You went to fucking Andover. I know you know all the words. No prep school sports team in the history of modern music has taken a roadie without listening to this!" But Nursey just looked appalled and rubbed his temples.

Shitty parked at the far end of the lot and made Nursey carry the door. Shitty secretly loved Home Depot, but it was part of a ruthless corporate machine so he called it Home Despot and pretended to hate it. But it had so much cool stuff and fooled him into thinking he could make something. He jumped onto an orange flatbed cart and drummed his hands on the bottom, making a racket. 

Shitty insisted Nursey push and yelled, “Mush!" Nursey tried to argue that sled dogs pull in front so that didn't make sense. Shitty turned back and looked from the destroyed door back to Nursey, who shut up and pushed Shitty across the rest of the bumpy asphalt. And if it seemed like Nursey aimed for some of the deeper potholes, well, that was good. Shitty was getting to him.

They made it half way across the store when an employee stopped them. "Son, you can't ride on the cart. It's a store policy."

“No problem, man. Liabilities. I get it.” Shitty hopped off. He wasn’t going to give some poor guy making less than minimum wage a hard time for doing what he was told. Plus he wouldn't put it past his old man to sue if he were injured in a freak Home Depot accident.

They found the screen doors and a nice lady with a measuring tape helped them when she saw them holding up the broken door against the new doors.

“Thank you, very much for your help, ma’am.” Shitty grinned at her and the woman couldn’t decide if he was sincere or not. She glanced from Shitty’s polite grin to his ripped yellow t-shirt that read SUPERMOM in the Superman font.

Nursey paid for the door with an Amex titanium card, which he tried to hide from Shitty’s line of sight. The caught each other's eyes and Nursey shrugged. Shitty shrugged back.

They had a harder time getting the new door into the car. They managed to wedge it diagonally, but Nursey had to move his seat up all the way and sat with his knees practically in his face. As far as Shitty was concerned this was all to the good. If you're going to break your policy of not interfering, you better make sure it counts. And getting through to an uncomfortable kid who feels like a dork is easier than talking to a frog who pretends he's emotionally teflon coated.

Or a dude who's actually teflon coated, which they must do in Canada. Free health care. Non-stick feelings.

Shitty turned left instead of the right that would take them back to campus. “We’re taking the scenic route.”

"Uh. That's cool." Nursey didn't sound like he meant it. He sounded worried that Shitty was going to dump his body in Revere.

“Nursey, you can’t help that you grew up on Central Park West. You can’t help that you spend winter break on St. Kitt’s. You turned down Harvard for Samwell. Trust me. I feel you.”

When Nursey didn’t protest, Shitty plowed on. “Dex doesn’t understand any of our shit. He’s had to scrape and bust his ass to get here. He’s on a scholarship. He’s the first person in his family to even go to college. He looks at us and what do you think he sees?”

“I know, but, dude is always chirping me. Saying I don’t know what it’s like to work hard. And--”

“Derek.” Shitty pulled up in front of an ice cream stand, still open until through leaf peeping season. He threw the car into neutral and yanked up the emergency break. “I get it. You’ve got parents with high standards and money. They put an assload of pressure on you. My father’s family is all Boston Brahmin. Like back to the fucking Mayflower. My mom’s family too. First 12 families, blah blah blah. Going to Harvard is expected. You want to achieve something in my family? Have an academic chair named after you or a building.”

Shitty got out of the car and sauntered over to the menu on the side of the shack. They stood in line behind a tired looking mom with six kids. She did a doubletake at Shitty's shirt. He grinned. "Someone should get you one of these." She laughed, but immediately had to go back to riding herd.

“What do you want, Nursey? My treat.”

“Uh. Chocolate vanilla twist.” Nursey said.

“Rainbow sprinkles? They taste like happiness.” 

“Um. Sure. Thanks.” Nursey still looked slightly worried this was a body dump or something.

Shitty bought the ice creams and handed one to Nursey. The sun was going down and they sat on a picnic table and watched it.

“I’m going to lay this out for you. We went to Andover. Getting into Harvard from that shit hole is normal. You had some great teachers, right? People always looking out for you and doing everything they could to make sure you succeeded. Enriching the hell out of your ass?

Nursey nodded and swiped a drip off the edge of his cone.

“To a kid like Dex? That looks unfair. And I get that he’s a white kid and he’s never had to put up with any racist bullshit. But you’ve never been poor. Oppression is oppression man. It's not your oppression, but it still sucks.”

“I was trying to help him,” Nursey said. The way he glanced at Shitty and then away quickly mean the kid knew he’d kind of fucked up. “His running shoes are goners. He’s going to wreck his knees. He can't afford new ones this semester. I have two extra pairs and we’re the same size, so I told him to take a pair.”

“Be craftier about it next time.” Shitty picked sprinkles off his mustache. “Get one of the other guys to offer. Or like leave him an anonymous gift card. Don’t make him feel bad or like he owes you. Don't remind him that he's poor and you're not.”

“Dude. He doesn’t owe me--”

“He thinks he does. He’s never gotten anything without working for it. It’s been drilled into his head that people like him get things when they work hard for them.”

“He’s got such a chip on his shoulder and like he doesn’t realize other people have problems,” Nursey said.

“You’ve traveled. Been to other countries. Went to school with all kinds of people. I mean you’re from New York. You’ve seen a lot of different people living different ways.”

“Yeah.” Nursey crunched into the wafer cone. “I get it. This shit is all new for him. It really started when my mom sent me photos of my sister all dressed up for a dance. She goes to Spence. And Dex asked if the dance was at a fancy hotel. I laughed and was like, "Nah, bruh. That's my apartment.”

"Ouch. Checked from behind." Nursey winced and Shitty checked his stache for lurking sprinkles. The sun was down and it was getting chilly. “Come on.”

The rest of the ride was quiet. When they arrived back at The Haus it was too dark to put up a new door. The anemic hall light was barely better than no light at all. They stowed it in the hall.

At breakfast Shitty made about 15 head nudges in Dex’s direction before Nursey looked up from his eggs and said, “What?” Then he realized.

As they were filing out, Shitty hung back. It’s not eavesdropping if you’re a secret mediator. (Later Lards would call him a puppet master and he'll insist he was practically Kofi Annan.) He could see them from the kitchen. Two dumb giants.

“Yo. Dex.” Dex stopped, but didn’t completely turn around. His shoulders rose slightly.

“I, like, broke the door yesterday and I have to put in the new one. Could you show me how to do it? I don’t want to fuck it up. Please?”

Dex relaxed. “I guess. I could meet you around 2:30.”

When Shitty got home after dinner, the new door was in place. It opened smoothly. He could hear the frogs in the living room playing Halo.

He found Bitty in the kitchen drinking water and tweeting about his sweet hockey children. “Don’t know what you said, but you did good.”

Shitty shrugged. Maybe he pointed (shoved?) Nursey in the right direction, but he’s not going to take credit for anything.

“I made you sea salted chocolate chip cookies.” Bitty slid a container over without even looking up from his phone. “Better take ‘em upstairs unless you want the hoards to descend.”

Shitty kissed Bitty loudly on the crown of his head, which made Bitty giggle. Such a happy sound, like bubbles in champagne. Jack could use more contact with happy and he could have it if only he'd wake the fuck up. Shitty settled for ruffling Bitty's hair enough to annoy him. "You are a gift to hockey kind, Bits."

Bitty made an _oh, please_ face at him, but went slightly pink.

"No. I mean it and if some people are too dumb to notice..." Bitty looked up and flushed red. Shitty coughed. He'd meddled enough for one day and he needed to stay out of this. Cause really the only idea he had was to smash their faces together while screaming, _"Now fucking kiss already."_ Which would probably make Jack kill him, if Bitty didn't poison him first. So he said, "Thanks for the cookies."

He grabbed them and paused to peek into the living room. Dex, in new running shoes, was wrecking Chowder in Halo. Nursey was sitting behind them shouting out unhelpful suggestions. Shitty scooped a handful of cookies out and slid the box in front of them. Winked at Nursey and went upstairs to get cookie crumbs in Jack’s bed.


End file.
